Countrywide Financial is now Bank of America Home Loans

It's official: Disgraced lender Countrywide Financial has now been "re-branded" as Bank of America Home Loans. Jane Wells reports on the move and all the window dressing that Bank of America is doing to try to convince people that Bank of America Home Loans is a good company, focused on providing service to people.

But what I don't understand is this: Is the Bank of America brand really that much more respected than Countrywide at this point? Countrywide was an evil, evil company run by Angelo Mozilo, a man who has become synonymous with slimy lending practices (and fake tanning but that's another story), but it can hold its head high in the conviction that it wasn't a welfare brat. Bank of America on the other hand is one of the largest recipients of taxpayer handouts, and that doesn't sit real well with most people. Add in Bank of America's tanking stock price and its decision to arbitrarily raise rates on credit card customers who did nothing wrong, and you have to wonder: Isn't this kind of like Enron changing its name to WorldCom?

Bank of America should rename Countrywide Financial something entirely new and unrelated to the mortgage industry today because that's what most people are looking for: a provider completely unrelated to all the shenanigans of the past few years.

What Bank of America needs to do is come up with a name that is completely innocuous, something warm and fuzzy that no one could possibly break out in hives of populist rage over. And then it hit me: Perry Como Home Loans.

Think about it: Perry Como was known as "Mr. Nice Guy" throughout a career that was marked by a long string of hits like "Hot Diggity Dog Ziggity Boom", "Catch a Falling Star" and "Magic Moments." He was a devoted family man, married to Roselle from 1933 until her death in 1988 and he even had a social conscience, raising a pair of adopted children. He was well-known for his Christmas albums but he sang Jewish songs too.

There was never a whiff of scandal about Mr. Nice Guy, and Perry would certainly never sell someone a mortgage that they couldn't afford and he would never dream of sticking someone with hidden fees.

Who's with me? Who would you rather borrow money from? Bank of America or Perry Como's American Dream Mortgage Services?